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A multi-party system is a system in which multiple political parties have the capacity to gain control of government separately or in coalition, e.g. The Christian-Democratic Union of Germany and Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CDU/CSU) in a Coalition with the Free Democratic Party (FDP) set up after the 2009 Federal elections. The effective number of parties in a multi-party system is normally larger than two but lower than ten. It is a system where there are large amounts of major and minor political parties that all hold a serious chance of receiving office, and because they all compete, a majority may not come to be, forcing the creation of a coalition.^[1]

Some Multi-Party systems consist of only 2 or 3 parties that have a real chance of forming a Single Party Government or a Coalition, however there are many other parties within the system have a chance of winning seats in the Legislate however their support is too small; these are usually known as Minority parties, or they only run candidates in a region of the country as they are a party that representing that region of the country e.g. SNP only run candidates in Scotland; these are usually known as regional parties. These parties can't possibly win a majority in the Legislate (or win enough seats for a major party to bother forming a coalition with them), thereby only leaving 2 or 3 that could form a Single Party Government or Coalition. Systems when only 2 parties have a possibility of winning an election are sometimes called a Two-party system, however this is a wrong term as a real two-party system is like the one found in the U.S. political system. A system were only 3 parties have a realistic possibility of winning an election or forming a coalition is sometimes called a "Third-party system", however in some cases the system is called a "Stalled Third-Party System" when there are 3 parties in the system, and all 3 parties win a large number of votes, however only 2 have a chance of winning a general election; this is usually because the electoral system penalises the third party e.g. UK politics, the Liberal Democrats gained 23% of the vote in 2010 elections but won less than 10% of the seats due to the First-Past-The-Post electoral system, however despite this they still have enough seats (and enough public support) for the other major 2 parties to form coalitions with them or make deals with the third party so to gain their support e.g. Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition formed after the 2010 general election and the Lib-Lab pact during Prime Minister James Callaghan's Minority Labour Government when Labour lost its 3 seat majority in 1977, the pact fell short of a full coalition.

Unlike a single-party system (or a two-party system), it encourages the general constituency to form multiple distinct, officially recognized groups, generally called political parties. Each party competes for votes from the enfranchised constituents (those allowed to vote). A multi-party system prevents the leadership of a single party from controlling a single legislative chamber without challenge.

If the government includes an elected Congress or Parliament the parties may share power according to proportional representation or the first-past-the-post system. In proportional representation, each party wins a number of seats proportional to the number of votes it receives. In first-past-the-post, the electorate is divided into a number of districts, each of which selects one person to fill one seat by a plurality of the vote. First-past-the-post is not conducive to a proliferation of parties, and naturally gravitates toward a two-party system, in which only two parties have a real chance of electing their candidates to office. This gravitation is known as Duverger's law. Proportional representation, on the other hand, does not have this tendency, and allows multiple major parties to arise.

A two-party system requires voters to align themselves in large blocs, sometimes so large that they cannot agree on any overarching principles. Along this line of thought, some theories argue that this allows centrists to gain control. On the other hand, if there are multiple major parties, each with less than a majority of the vote, the parties are strongly motivated to work together to form working governments. This also promotes centrism, as well as promoting coalition-building skills while discouraging polarization.

The two party system is caused by a political science theory called Duverger's law. As such, recent collation governments, such as that in the U.K. are two-party systems not multi-party systems. This is regardless of the number of parties in government.

Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Taiwan are examples of nations that have used a multi-party system effectively in their democracies. In these countries, usually no single party has a parliamentary majority by itself. Instead, multiple political parties form coalitions for the purpose of developing power blocs for governing.

See also[link]

• Coalition
• Polarized pluralism

References[link]

Lobsang Sangay
Prime Minister of the Central Tibetan Administration
Incumbent
Assumed office 8 August 2011
Monarch	Tenzin Gyatso
Preceded by	Lobsang Tenzin
Personal details
Born	1968 (age 43–44) Darjeeling, India
Alma mater	University of Delhi Harvard University
Religion	Vajrayana Buddhism

Lobsang Sangay (born 1968 at Darjeeling) is a Tibetan refugee, legal scholar and political activist. He was elected as the next Kalon Tripa (equivalent to Prime Minister) of the Tibetan Government in Exile on 26 April 2011, succeeding the 5th Samdhong Rinpoche.

Education and academic career[link]

After graduating from the Tibetan Refugee school in Darjeeling, Sangay received his B.A. (Hons) and LL.B. degrees from the University of Delhi in India. In 1995, he won a Fulbright Scholarship to Harvard Law School, where he subsequently received his LL.M. degree the same year.^[1]

In 2003, Sangay organized five conferences between Chinese and Tibetan scholars, including a meeting between the Dalai Lama and thirty-five Chinese scholars at Harvard University.

In 2004, he became the first Tibetan (among six million) to earn a S.J.D. degree from Harvard Law School and was a recipient of the 2004 Yong K. Kim' 95 Prize of excellence for his dissertation Democracy in Distress: Is Exile Polity a Remedy? A Case Study of Tibet's Government-in-exile.^[1] In 2006, Sangay was selected as one of the twenty-four Young Leaders of Asia by the Asia Society, a global organization working to strengthen relationships and promote understanding among the people, leaders, and institutions of Asia and the United States. Sangay is currently a Senior Fellow at the East Asian Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School. He is an expert in Tibetan law and international human rights law.

Governmental career[link]

L. Sangay in Vienna, Austria, in 2012.

On April 27, 2011 he was elected Kalon Tripa of the Tibetan Government in Exile.^[2][3][4] Sangay won 55% of the votes, defeating Tenzin Tethong (37.4%) and Tashi Wangdi (6.4%). 83,400 Tibetan were eligible to vote and 49,000 ballots were cast.^[4] He will succeed Lobsang Tenzin as the head of the Tibetan Government in Exile. On August 8, 2011 Lobsang Sangay officially took oath and accepted his post as the Kalon Tripa.

While the leadership of the government-in-exile is in a state of transition, the 14th Dalai Lama remains formally ceremonial Head of State and has taken no political stances since his announced retirement in early 2011 from active participation in Tibetan affairs.^[5]

Personal life[link]

Sangay was born in a village in Darjeeling in 1968, with a typical Shichak (settlement) background amidst fields, cows, chicken, fetching wood in the forest and helping his parent's small business including winter sweater selling. March 10 is used as his birthday as shown on his facebook page,^[6] but he doesn’t know the exact day on which he was born nor did a lot of Tibetan children born in those years in the refugee camp.^[7] Upon registration in school where a birthday was needed, his parents entered March 10, as did the parents of almost a third of his classmates. To Tibetans, March 10 is known as the National Uprising Day (1959 Tibetan uprising), marking the 1959 armed rebellion against the Chinese rule over Tibet.^[7] Presently, he lives in Greater Boston area in the US. His mother Kelsang Choden from Chamdo lives with him and his father died in 2004. He is married to Kesang Yangdon Shakchang, whose parents were from the Lhokha and Phare area. They have been together for 13 years and have a three-year-old daughter.

Works[link]

• Tibet: Exiles' Journey, Journal of Democracy – Volume 14, Number 3, July 2003, pp. 119–130 Tibet: Exiles' Journey archived [1]
• We Sing a Song of Sadness Tibetan Political Prisoners Speak Out, Billy Jackson, Publish America, 2004, ISBN 1-4137-1677-6
• Lobsang Sangay, China in Tibet: Forty Years of Liberation or Occupation?, Harvard Asia Quarterly, Volume III, No. 3, 1999.
• Human rights and Buddhism : cultural relativism, individualism & universalism, Thesis (LL. M.), Harvard Law School, 1996, OCLC 43348085
• Democracy in distress : is exile polity a remedy? : a case study of Tibet's government in exile, Thesis (S.J.D.), Harvard Law School, 2004, OCLC 62578261
• A constitutional analysis of the secularization of the Tibetan diaspora : the role of the Dalai Lama, in Theology and the soul of the liberal state, ed. Leonard V Kaplan; Charles Lloyd Cohen, Lanham : Lexington Books, 2010, ISBN 978-0-7391-2617-2

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lobsang Sangay

• A Review of Lobsang Sangay's Published Scholarly Works
• Interview of Lobsang Sangay as Tibetan Prime Minister in Exile by Asia Times
• Dr.Lobsang Sangay • Special Meeting in Dharamsala
• Audio of the Lobsang Sangay HARDtalk BBC interview